Death Game
by Schrodinger's Muse
Summary: A game devised by a madman from a 20th century gathers murderors from across the country and pits them against each other in a bloodbath for survival... or pure carnal pleasure. Shinichi finds himself amongst them. And he wants to know why. Eventual KaiShin. Probably !Dark.
1. Chapter 1

Hello all, it's been a while, but suffice to say I'm back.

This story is my attempt to regains spontaneity as I write.

*NINJA EDIT* and there are fewer grammar mistakes than that would imply because of the lovely **AliceInTheSunlight** (consult her on all things language related, trust me)

Eventual KaiShin

Also Kind of Dark.

* * *

 **Death Game**

 **Chapter 1: The Man**

In a dark room, there sat an old television set. Lines of static flickered and ran down the screen. A man, his face contorted by the static, was making empathetic gestures from behind the curved glass. _"You-"_ he said. _"-could be the one. You in the silly hat, you with the pride so swollen it's ballooned and swallowed you up. You bored genius, not so bored anymore, once you hear me out. Life got no surprises? Well, you are wrong. Because what better surprise for all of you, than my game."_

Opposite the television is a gnarled chair whose wooden limbs twisted out of the darkness like tendrils. On the chair sat a boy, no more than twenty years old, judging by the smooth shaven chin and slim hands. He had one hand on his chin, and was regarding the television screen from under lowered eyelids. There was a sharp glint to his pupils, as if he could see beyond the glass and the static, and comprehend the man as if he were in front of him, instead of behind this one way mirror.

The man continued to expound, his clothing old fashioned, like a WWI veteran without the badges. His voice was similarly coloured in shades of worn sepia. _"I, MacArthur myself, personally invite you to participate. I can see you, perhaps clearer than you can see yourselves. And I detect..."_ The man in the box paused, and his hands fumbled at his tie, before quickly dropping innocuously back to into his expansive gestures. He jabbed a finger through the screen.

The boy sank back into the hard back of his chair, and his hands tightened on the edge of the seat.

" _I detect blood-lust. A thirsting rage, a coursing desire. You seek blood, you misfits of society. And I – we – this game will give you blood. More than you hope for, more than you seek. You will be sated, as you have never been before - whether you rob blood banks, or commit homicide, or snack furtively on the veins of your children at night. We will give you death, and blood, and blood, and blood, and blood-"_

"Enough," the boy commanded, his voice soft. The television screen wavered and snapped into a thin white line, before vanishing into black. The room was abruptly cast into complete shadow.

The boy stood from the chair, which seemed to release him with a sigh. He was a young man, with pale skin and black hair spiked in a cowlick, but otherwise tamed, clad in an ultramarine suit. He turned a pair of clear blue eyes towards the light filtering through a pair of bars on the doors.

His voice was resolute. "Let me out. I've seen enough."

The room was silent. The boy crossed his arms in front of his chest and exuded a soft hiss. Finally, a man's head moved in, obstructing the light filtering in through the bars. A long clang like two glasses smashed together, and a scream of metal, before the door swung reluctantly open on heavy hinges.

The man stood back, and allowed the boy to pass. With a final glance into the room and a tiny shiver wracking his shoulders, the boy stepped gratefully out of the dark room and into artificial fluorescent light.

The man revealed himself to be middle-aged, with prominent bags under his eyes. A stray strand of grey hair fell in front of his eyes – too long – and he brushed it back behind his glasses with an absent gesture. "Shocking," he murmured. "Truly shocking. We're sorry to bring you into this Kudo, but you're the best we know. Bar that, you're the best around." He averted his eyes, conscience stealing over him in a guilty wave. "But you're barely out of _high school,"_ he grimaced. Finally, as if a great load suddenly emptied its contents on his stomach, he doubled over and clutched his head in his hands, motionless on the ground.

Kudo looked taken aback, before giving a small smile. Resigned, bitter. "It's alright Inspector," he said gently, and kneeled beside the man, one hand clasping his shoulder. "There's no need to blame yourself. When there are homicides, there will always be homicide detectives. Better to use whatever resources you have, than to let them run rampant."

The Inspector seemed abashed at being comforted by a man some two decades his junior. Though this was Kudo, who had homicide cases stumbling across his path almost as soon as he could crawl. There was something deeply sad, he reflected, and deeply disconcerting about the boy. His silhouette was straight, his back unbent as he strode purposely, eyes sliding past the room and leaving with conclusions and scenarios with each pass of those clear blue eyes. An intellect and experience so great for his age, Kudo Shinichi was aptly named the 'child prodigy', and even as he outlived the 'child' and grew to an adult, the prodigy suffix never left his name, except on occasion, to be replaced with 'master'.

The Inspector fingered his badge, and turned it over with his thumb. It felt as if the flimsy piece of plastic were the only thing between him and immediate retirement. He cast a furtive glance at the open door, beyond which sat the television, shrouded in gloom. It had been found in the abandoned home of a man in his 30s; alcoholic, unemployed, prone to depressive bursts, followed by weeks of extreme mania. No family. Had written journals with pages filled with odes to sharp objects. The ideal makings of a madman, or a murderer.

The television had been playing the tape on repeat, in an empty room with a single wooden chair placed in front of it. The occupant of the house and owner of the television had disappeared only days earlier, failing to turn up to his weekly check-up at his local police-solicited psychologist. The psychologist had immediately alerted an officer, who passed the case on the Inspector after realizing that the man was not on any official record and there were no handbooks describing what to do in such circumstances. The Inspector had spent days frisking the unit, taking fingerprint samples which turned up nothing but the alcoholic man's own grungy prints. He had scoured the floors, examined minute hairs, tracked the tape to a post office in Australia where, mysteriously, all records vanished.

A week later, he was staring at his cell phone, the number of one 'Shinichi Kudo' flashing across the screen. His fingers, suddenly heavy and clumsy, had moved and fell on the call button.

Shinichi's answering voice had been quiet, assured. He had known of course. Not of the specific case, but whenever the Inspector's number flashed on his own cell phone screen he knew it was another 'special' incident The Inspector could imagine him, picking up the cell dutifully with slim fingers. Inside that too intelligent head, thinking, _I'm done. I'm done cleaning up humanity's garbage, but I'll still do it. Because who else will._

The Inspector lifted his head out of his hands and unbent himself, staring after Shinichi's retreating silhouette. He would save them yet, he thought. If not Kudo, then the next generation of Holme's fans. With that small resolution lit, he took a breath and followed Shinichi out into the briefing room.

"32 disappearances in two weeks-"

"What will the public think?"

"So far, 24 are known homicide risk factors, and 4 have committed a crime. The rest are civilians."

"We can't discount the fact that we may have overlooked some risk factors during the tests. Some symptoms do manifest themselves later in life."

"-this is preposterous! We have to send out a report! _People need to be aware this is happening-"_

"Who's the man? He's frightening. He talks of blood like-,like-"

" _-how do you propose to find these people by keeping quiet!"_

A woman was pacing about the room, a sheaf of papers clutched white knuckled in her hands. Several others – 3 people in total – varying from middle aged to seasoned, have similar papers spread out before them on an ornate coffee table. There were mugs beside their hands, but they were mostly untouched and growing cold.

A woman's head snapped up as she noticed Shinichi's silhouette in the doorway. "Kudo!", she cried. A terse silence descended upon the company.

A ghost of a smile traced Shinichi's lips. "It hasn't been long, Inspector Keira, Inspector Rajik, Inspector Gon."

They gave a small laugh at that.

"Please, sit down, Kudo." Keira gestured at an empty seat beside her and Rajik produced a styrofoam cup and poured it full of fragrant brown liquid. Shinichi relaxed into the chair and took the cup into both hands, tipping it down his throat.

He released a sigh and clasped his hands in front of him, on the desk.

Meanwhile, Nakamori had entered the room, and sat himself quietly to one side of Gon, who acknowledged him with a brief nod.

"You've all been very thorough this time around," he began. The gathered Inspectors shared a congratulatory smile between them. "However, there is one thing that was overlooked." He paused, and reached over to pour himself another cup. The liquid flowed down in a steady stream, even as his eyebrows furrowed. "That man was extending an invitation. Everyone who disappeared, if they were responding to his invitation, would have gone of their own free will."

Inspector Gon, a middle-aged man with eyebrows drawn low on a strong jawed face, straightened. "But you don't know. They could have been blackmailed. Indeed, we found ink stains on top of the cassette where a letter could have been folded."

Shinichi shook his head. "No – all of the disappearance were routine. The people simply vanished. 32 is a large sample size. If there was blackmail, or threats involved, we can reasonably assume that some number of them would have left evidence to suggest this. A covert letter, an anonymous call. Something. Nothing unusual turned up. Meaning, each person went to this-, this game out of their own will."

He paused and uncurled his hands on the table. He looked at his hands as if contemplating why on earth they were attached to his body before clenching them again, restrained in his lap. "And I know this because –" suddenly, his lips were dry. He licks them once, quickly, aware of the weight of the gathering's collective eyes on him. "I, also, received a cassette."

"What!" Nakamori slammed his hands explosively on the table. "Kudo! You could be charged for wilfully withholding information potentially valuable to a case. More than that – the other invitees are criminals! People who murder without discrimination!"

"I know!" Shinichi snapped, rising out of his own seat. "Do not think that has escaped me Inspector! But the cassette is real, I've watched him speak his twisted message on my living room TV. I'm no longer a child!" He held Nakamori's eyes for a heartbeat, the older man's look of betrayal cutting him more deeply than he would admit. "Besides," he added, pressing his forehead to his knuckles, "this is also an opportunity."

"I won't allow it!" Nakamori shouted. "Shinichi, you are too young, too wilful. This man is more dangerous than you understand."

"What about my other cases," Shinichi challenged. "There is no difference, but you seem set on inventing one, Nakamori."

Kiera had a hand on Nakamori's sleeve, and as he made as if to continue his verbal battle, she pulled the him down. With a stern stare, she caught Shinichi's eye. "Kudo," she said, softly. "We trust your judgement. But Nakamori is right. You're young, talented. It would be a waste to lose you to this mad man."

Shinichi's mouth opened. "But you have no leads, insufficient evidence-"

The woman's unyielding stare stopped him. "It's non-negotiable, Shinichi," she said, and her tone is final.

Shinichi bit his lip and sat back, consigned to the outskirts of the conversation sat the detectives talked in circles about the case... the man... the game. He drinks his coffee, and when his cup empties, refills it. Over and over, like clockwork until the hands of the clock affixed to the opposite wall strikes a digit, and the inspectors left the room. Nakamori was the last to leave. He looks at Shinichi for a long moment, opens his mouth, then seems to think better of it and stalks out the room.

Shinichi was left in an empty room lit with unnatural light, an empty Styrofoam cup in one hand, his chin in the other. He felt drained. Nakamori was someone he respected, if not for his skills as an officer, then as a person. He did not know what made him loose his tight reins on his temper, but it had raged forth and wrecked havoc, with Shinichi cowering and powerless to stop it. He was being coddled, because of his age, his face still soft and youthful despite his twenty years. But he had been exposed to more cases, and solved more murders than the four of them combined. Blood was nothing to him. The blank gazes, bodies stiffening into tree-limbs and cold flesh with the onset of _rigor mortis_ was scenery. Unpleasant, but unremarkable.

He tipped his head back and consulted the blank ceiling. The man's words had struck a strange chord with him. The narrator appeared antique – the clip seemed to have been shot in the early '90s, and the voice proclaiming 'blood, and blood, and blood' was worn and crackling with age.

Despite himself, he felt a quickening of his pulse. Blood meant nothing to him, but he did not thirst after it, it was a fixture, like furniture, in his daily life. But the bloodstained mystery, the tale of the murderer and his victim, never failed to fill him with a thrill that reached into his gut. He bit off a hungry gasp.

A crawling realization tingled like a prophecy up his spine. In a way, he reflected, he _was_ enamoured with blood.

That night, Shinichi drew the curtains of his bedroom close and ordered take away from the local pizza joint. He sat down at the couch and replayed the cassette tape of the man, pausing when he spoke of blood with the primal fascination in his worn voice, and rewinding to play it again... and again... and again.

" _Blood, and blood, and blood and blood andbloodandblodsandoblobooood..."_

The pizza delivery man had an unfailing smile as he handed Shinichi the pizza, the well groomed young man before him no doubt a model citizen, he thought. But his expression quickly turned to one of distaste and fear as the ghostly wail of the TV set floated out of the doorway, casting Shinichi's puzzled frown into a sinister mask of a madman.

The pizza man retreated with a hasty tip of his hat, and the path winding through the gardens of the mansion no longer seemed so welcoming, with the plant tendrils becoming fingers that threatened to drag the man into a forest of madness, with the mad boy, a soundtrack of " _blood and blood and blood_ " singing derisively in the background.

Shinichi, meanwhile, had taken the pizza to the couch, and proceeded to eat it, pulling the cheese gently apart with his front teeth. When the box was devoured, he noticed it was too big for his bin, so he took it outside and left it on the porch for the native residents of his garden to sniff over curiously in his absence. He took a watch, his cell phone, a length of string, a torch, a large water bottle (filled), a large fur lined jacket and bag of first aid implements and put it in his bag. Finally, he reached into his pocket and unfolded a piece of brown parchment paper.

He read out the two words scrawled in neat cursive on the front before carefully folding it back again and tucking it into his breast pocket.

As the moon sailed its way across the velvet sky, she shone her light onto the garden of one Shinichi Kudo. It was strangely wild, the moon thought. The plants seemed restless and eager to conquer the solemn brick mansion which had stood in the middle of their domain uncontested for so many years, now empty.

For Shinichi Kudo was no longer there.

 **TBC**


	2. Chapter 2

Rant about my shitty edition of MS Word without a working spellcheck/grammarcheck. Please , I'm Australian, I have license to insert as many extra 'u's as I want. :(

(That aside I have no regrets upgrading from Word 2000 .)

* * *

 **Death Game  
**

 **Chapter 2: The Game**

Nakamori passed a hand over his eyes and exuded a harsh sigh. It was late, and the pale light of the computer screen made his eyes ache. It was the third night in a row and he was beginning to wonder whether he needed new glasses, or eyedrops, or simply a break from the fucking machine itself.

The office was empty. He was sitting beside the single live monitor in the room, which cast his skin in a sickly glow. _Click. Click. Click._ Pause. _Click._

Like bullets, his finger pressed on the mouse. There were mugshots scrolling across the top of his screen. Men, most of them, with the occasional woman looking frightened and out of place. Then again, they were all frightened, to some degree. The cases were recent, occurring right after a new government legislation that legalized the use of electric chairs. Nakamori felt it was inhumane, but the suited representatives had pointed out, reasonably, the victims were inhumane in equal measure. It was like paying back a debt, they'd explained, blood for blood.

Nakamori thought that somewhere in their legal system built on logic, they had lost their morality all together. _Then again..._ he thought, grimacing. _The criminals themselves aren't exactly helping their own case._

 _Ed Gein_ , he read. _Serial killer, notable for a fascination with human body parts. Upon raiding his residence on the 23/06/2008 was found: a belt of human nipples, a chair cover made of human skin, female skulls adorning the bedposts, human limbs used as both hanging ornaments (in the fashion of a chandelier and paintings). Photographic evidence taken, subsequently destroyed. Was excused from court on the grounds of mental illness with a lifetime imprisonment._

He clicked again.

 _Aria Nigh, responsible for several murders when 7 years old. Involvement seemed auxillary, evidence insufficient to suggest otherwise._

The screen showed a ruby haired girl in a blurred school uniform. Her eyes were large and grey, and she seemed startled by the presence of the camera.

Barely a child, Nakamori thought in disgust, and clicked away. The computer chuffed a little in protest. The screen flickered to white, before finally spitting out an image. A plane of text scrolled down moments later, and wavered, before reluctantly returning to a stand still.

 _Ralph K MacArthur, transfer from detention in Lowesia. Accomplice in the murder of his wife. Other details unknown: refer to Collapse of Lowesian Government and Associated Powers._

The minute text on the bottom of the blue task bar helpfully reminded him that he was four hours away from the start of work and any sleep he would get that night. Nakamori tore his bleary eyes from the screen and pinched the bridge of his nose. He would have to call sick, he thought ruefully. He was tired, bloody drained. When he'd first begun to browse the profiles of the abducted 'citizens' he hadn't thought much of it. He was a police officer, and admittedly he'd been in fraud more so than other cases, but the police department was no stranger to rumour mills, and he'd thought he'd heard the worst. But reading it through first hand - the cold impersonal recounts of the destruction of lives - it made his mustache stand on end and prickle with injustice.

The people who had been collected for this game were dangerous, more than he had believed. But yet...

Shinichi had also been invited.

Nakamori lips thinned. Closing the window of his file, he brought up a new screen and browsed into the database containing information on inside police personnel. Kudo's name appeared under 'special', and after a brief mechanical choking sound, the computer upheaved the information onto the monitor.

 _Shinichi Kudo. Prodigal detective since a young age, claims to be inspired by Holmes. Case involvement as follows:_

A long list. Nakamori thought, scrolling down. He shook his head. An unbelievably long list. The boy was either insanely unlucky or... or...

More than eighty percent were murders, Nakamori realized. A cold feeling bit at his stomach. He refused to believe it – the boy was a natural, the mind of the perpetrator was transparent to him, and he consolidated the evidence into a water tight case with a flippant ease even seasoned detectives marvelled at and struggled to duplicate.

Shinichi Kudo was a genius.

Or the orchestrator.

Nakamori wheeled his chair in closer to the monitor screen and pressed his nose into the light. _Just a few more minutes,_ he thought, hand tightening around the mouse. The cases flickered past. He could find no evidence to the contrary.

Desperate, he brought up old case files; searched through the profiles of his known compatriots.

Several hours passed and saw the sun peeking over the city skyline, diffusing amber light into the sky. Nakamori was slouched in his chair, head in his hands. A haphazard array of windows were displayed on the monitor.

A few birds started a tentative chorus. They were joined, soon enough, and the muffled sound of their mutual laments of the new day throbbed through the concrete walls. Nakamori's head remained bowed. He was tired by the extended use of a computer screen, suggested the grinning OHS fairy pasted on the door. Fifteen minutes break per hour of computer usage, it scolded in silent reprimand.

When the birds were finally exhausted from their early morning vocal chord exercises, Nakamori slowly unpeeled himself from the chair and logged off the computer. He went through a deserted corridor and got into the silently opening lift. On the ground floor, the doors slid quietly open, and Nakamori stepped out. He went to the reception desk.

The receptionist was a pleasant lady with tightly curled blond hair balanced on her head. She was accustomed to being the only person in the building in the early hours. She enjoyed the quiet, the briefest moment where the building was silent of people and she could practise her greetings and answers to empty air. Thus, when Nakamori stepped out of the elevator, all words died in her throat, but she composed her slack jawed expression with the ease born of the experience of a slew of awkward conversations with overly familiar retired policemen.

"Why Inspector, it's rare to see you here so early. Did you just arrive?" she rambled. "You look rather tired. Didn't sleep well? Ha ha! I think that's all of us, really, but you must have it particularly tough."

"Yes," the Inspector agreed _._ "I would like to call sick. Put me down for a week please, would you? I-I think I'll be better by then."

The lady gave a good natured smile. It was a lovely morning, after all. The birds were rarely so lively. "I'll write it in" _,_ she said and waved Nakamori on.

A good man, she thought privately. Dedicated. But he does look tired _._ She shook her head. _Must be the job._

Nakamori had already made his desolate way to the deserted parking lot, and was standing in front of a faded grey shadow that was the outline of his car before sense overcame him. Swearing, he fumbled into his pocket for his cell. Shinichi's number came up, and desperately, he tapped the 'call' button and pressed the phone up to his ear.

 _This is Kudo speaking. I'm probably busy at the moment, but please leave your name and number and the outline of the case..._

With shaking hands he disconnected and dialed again.

 _This is Kudo speaking, I'm probably busy at the moment..._

* * *

Busy was not the right word to describe Shinichi. Certainly, his mind could be called 'busy' – if constant activity was a synonym. But physically, he was as quiet as a dormouse in winter. He was in a room, he thought, detecting the stillness of the air. His hands were restrained, he could feel the cold metal tight and vice-like on his skin. There was a sharp chemical smell in the air. Sleeping gas? No, he decided, it was too sharp, too brazen. More like 'waking gas', because as he inhaled he felt his mind sharpen and his pulse quicken.

There was a scratching sound on what he presumed was a wall. He squinted into the darkness, but the room was tightly sealed and there was no light he could detect. He felt lightheaded: where was up? He could feel his feet, but they were almost not there – too tightly clamped in place for any movement to register their presence in his brain.

Shinichi chewed his lip and remained silent. He concentrated on his breathing: the slow inhale, a smooth exhale.

When the voice finally came, he was ready.

"Welcome." A pause. "You must have done something _exceptional_ in order to get here, so I won't bother to congratulate you. But congratulations anyway! Since, as humans, we all _love_ being praised – if you must know, I learned that in psychology class. 'Behavioral Conditioning' they called it. Course for misfits. Like me, It's practically my middle name – except that would be awfully unoriginal.."

The voice continued in a breezy tangent. It bore a conversational tone: as if Shinichi and it were in a park, admiring some roses, or something equally as tedious and the voice was the only thing keeping them both from falling into a kind of hell of boredom.

The voice seemed to enjoy the sound of itself, Shinichi thought. He was beginning to doubt the soundness of his strategy. Accepting an invitation by a (well-meaning?) madman? What had he expected anyway? He clenched his wrists and tested them against the restraints again. To his surprise they gave way with a small beep and a blink of red light. In that fractional second of illumination, Shinichi made out the walls of the room, which seemed situated about three strides from the end of a concrete block he was tied down on. There was no visible door.

Reassured now of the orientation of his body relative to Earth, he sat up gingerly and yanked his feet out of their brackets.

"WHOA!" the voice exclaimed in mock surprise. "Escaped prisoner! Call the guards!" A crashing sound and a muffled thump crackled out of the speakers. Shinichi swung his legs over the edge of the concrete block. No numbness – the blood was circulating properly. That, at least, meant he hadn't been here long. Shinichi glared at where he thought the disembodied voice was coming from.

"Where am I?" he demanded. "Who are you and why am I here?"

A small silence and Shinichi shuffled his feet. There was no light, he hadn't seen any visible exit during the pin light that had briefly lit up when his wrists had been released. He waited for a moment longer, and when the room remained stuck stubbornly in a limbo of shocked silence, he gave an empathetic sigh and got up gingerly from the concrete block. Shinichi extended his fingertips cautiously, and brushed them across the perimeter of the room, scouring it systematically in three strides across and up and down again. He couldn't feel his bag. He glanced at the ceiling again. Fate had somehow conspired to deliver him into the hands of an egocentric voice. It was not how he'd planned his life, but it would certainly be... an interesting way to go.

"So many questions." The voice had returned. "So few answers for you. Do you know what I like best, Kudo? I love people. I love making them wriggle, like worms, out of their skins - and they look happy, the poor things – before I pour salt on their bare flesh."

"You're mad," Shinichi stated.

The voice laughed, a pitch which crackled the concealed speaker. "That wasn't me," it said mysteriously. "Not everybody has such an unwavering personality as yours, Kudo. We flow, change, like water."

"And you've just shown your own ignorance," Shinichi said. "I know people. And people like you happen to be my specialty."

"Ah, of course." The voice was mocking. "Little detective. Small fry in my playground. How long will you last, I wonder? A day? Two? Maybe less, maybe dead in the first hour."

"Try me. Surprise yourself."

The voice laughed again, and the speakers wailed in protest. "Trust me, that was the intention. But Kudo, it is time for me to answer your questions. As much as I enjoy our little battles they are ultimately of no significance and – dare I say – detract from the true purpose of it all. I am the Game Master. You are my pawn. There are twenty-eight others in my arsenal. They are already on the board... _playing_." A pause. "The rules are simple enough. This is chess – kill, kill, kill, and become queen. And before you back out, remember I have a contract. You agreed to do this, it would be awfully unfair of you if you gave up now." The voice took on a tone like a petulant child.

Shinichi remained expressionless. Twenty eight remaining. What had happened to the other four? It sounded as if they had been ousted from the game – dead, maybe. His fists clenched. He'd need to find out where this was, figure out the madman's intentions. He'd find some means of contacting the police, somehow. They'd no doubt notice his disappearance soon, and he wanted to make his stay in this place as short as possible. That man was unpredictable, dangerous. He was scared, but he was breathless with excitement.

It was a tangled web of lies he'd been caught in. Rules flitted about on invisible gossamer, and swayed out of reach each time he grasped for them. He loved nothing more than a good mystery. He loved being in one, he loved solving it in the thick of it. In that sense, the game slid into himself as easily as if it had always been there – returning from a long journey away from its motherland.

The voice clicked its tongue. "Oops," it said, carefree and expectant.

Abruptly, the ground opened under Shinichi's feet. His eyes widened, and an appreciative smile curved on his lips. Of course, he'd forgot about the floor. The reality of free-fall soon caught up to him though, and he wrapped himself in a ball and tucked his arms protectively against his chest, biting back a yell.

The retreating laugh of the disembodied voice followed him down the rapid descent.

The air rushing past him pulled at his hair and blew frigid blasts against the warmth of his jacket. He felt the wind grow stronger, until it became a incoherent roar pounding against his eardrums. _Fuck. I didn't think he'd try to kill me so soon – but that man is unpredictability personified..._

Whumph! Suddenly, there was soft, pliable tissue below him. His body barreled into it, and the material gave a squeak of protest as it bent to soften his descent. Blinking tears out of his eyes, Shnichi could see a wall of what looked like a thin rubbery plastic towering above him, before it sprang away in a sudden exhalation and he found himself reversing direction and launched up.

He bounced in several of these things (one green, one blue, one a cheerful polka dot pattern) before his momentum slowed. Tucking himself clumsily back into his ball again, he let himself be launched helpless across the air. Each launch and descent was too sudden for him to make out much – but forcing his eyes open into a cat-like squint, he managed to see a fraction of his surroundings before the rapid blasts of air slammed his eyelids shut again. A field. A white building shaped like a needle. A rectangular pool of water masquerading as an ocean.

The bouncing slowed, and he could keep his eyes open for longer. He was in a large desert, he realized. Looking up, he almost expected to see a sky – but of course, he was inside a building, and the 'sky' was covered with the unmistakable mosaic of blue pixels. Even if he found his phone, reception would be difficult to find here.

Then all conscious thought stole away from him as he was suddenly overcome with an overpowering urge to puke.

Finally, he lay still in a pool of yellow plastic, momentum dissipated, breath coming in harsh pants. His stomach churned. Swallowing, he made a face at the sour aftertaste of bile on the inner skin of his throat. There'd been a reason why he'd avoided bungee jumping all his life, he remembered.

There was something scratchy on his back. With a sigh, he brushed himself off. A positive landslide of dust fell from beneath his collar and formed a neat little hill at his feet. He hoped there'd be a shower, he thought glumly. Weren't protagonists supposed to have some _good luck_ once in a while? Though he refused to stake much on that same hope. Deserts and desert dwellers weren't exactly known to be spare with these things.

The desert lived up to its name. It was a leveled landscape Shinichi saw around him. Utterly devoid of landmarks. He had held out a slim hope for a cacti – or _anything_ to orient himself – but aside from a sand dune which bore two outcroppings like the baubles of Sailor Moon's hair, there seemed to be nothing. The sun he couldn't use either – for all he knew, the white pixels crawling across the sky could be deliberately misleading. _Where am I, anyway?_

He turned back to his landing spot. The puddle of yellow plastic – now that he'd stepped away – looked like a deflated balloon. Pinching a piece between his fingers, he gave it an experimental rub. It crumbled away and floated peaceably downwards to join the innocuous grains of dust adorning the ground. Baffled, Shinichi watched as the remainder of the plastic seemed to take the hint of its dissolved compatriot and abruptly disappeared from the landscape.

 _Well._ Shinichi thought wittily. _That's... new._

A wall of air slammed into him, and suddenly his arm was being yanked halfway out of its socket.

"We got 'im!" a girl's voice crowed.

"Aye," someone supplied.

 _Grunt._

"Wait – what the fuck," Shinichi gasped. "is going on. I think I was perfectly happy standing by the remains of my landing cushion, thanks."

His legs were barely keeping up with the pace the girl was pulling him at. She looked young, but he noticed her arms were corded with scars.

"HAHA! He calls it a landing cushion! Did you hear that Ed? A landing cushion!" she shouted through a stream of laughter.

"No cushion, miss, is complete without your skin on it," a balding man with a row of freckles on his nose said sincerely. His eyebrows were drawn low at the corners and pressed high into his brow in a permanent expression of quiet surprise – or childlike innocence.

Shinichi gaped. Disembodied voices, giant artificial underground deserts, random disintegrating plastic material... and now Ed Gein? He thought the man'd been locked up years ago – he'd personally read through the case notes himself in his brief stint studying serial killers (homicides tended to be more interesting, he'd finally decided, mainly because it didn't always depend on the sanity of the perpetrator). And a girl. And – when he realized he couldn't tug his wrist free, he'd swung his head around to look for a new avenue of escape – a squat troll man.

Shinichi eyed the knife tucked carefully beneath Ed Gein's arm and swallowed. He regretted this soon enough. The pace was punishing, and he'd barely managed to work his legs hard enough to keep up, let alone keep up a consistent flow of inner commentary and use his mouth for something other than desperate gasping breaths.

For all practical purposes mute, he breathed bravely and his legs soldiered on. Soccer practice had rarely seemed such a productive distraction.

"Three hundred meters," the girl called. "Dodo, I can see them ahead. It's that group who got the ranged weapon card."

 _Grunt._

The squat troll like man with a shrunken head passed Ed Gein, came up beside Shinichi, and with a sidelong glance that sent a chill through Shinichi's spine, passed him as well and jogged steadily to take the lead.

He had gone no more than five, ten meters ahead of them, before the air erupted with a cacophonous buzzing. The man was soon smothered in a swarm of grey.

 _Bees? Iron filings? No-_ Between the screams of his legs, Shinichi registered something slippery cutting across his cheek. There was a brief flash of cold, before heat ignited in the cut and he bit back a scream.

 _Needles,_ he realized and tried to pull away. The girl's grip tightened.

"Keep moving!" she yelled. " _Do you want to be killed?_ Truthfully, I don't care if you are. Fuck. Shit. You fucking bastards!" Shouting expletives, she raced straight into the grey fog, Shinichi attached to her arm like an extra tail. Close behind her, the surprised looking man followed them in a thoughtful pace of his own.

 _It's too thick,_ Shinichi thought, eyes widening. _We'll be cut to pieces at worst. Living pincushions at best. But it's possible-_

Just as they entered the threshold, the cloud of grey seemed to freeze in the air. It was suddenly too quiet, too still. Then a crash like splintering glass shattered the facade and the needles in the air fell. Quietly, at first, but then growing to a hive-like buzz as they collided with other needles already covering the desert sand.

"Dodo did good," the Ed Gein put in.

"Good job Dodo!" the girl yelled.

Despite himself, Shinichi could feel a relieved grin curling on his face. Stupid, he knew. He was in the middle of a desert, surrounded by small pointy objects which had moments ago been wielded with the intention to kill. He had come into a 'game' of his own free will, but then been kidnapped – against said free will – by three people who, most likely, were wanted criminals.

The cloud of needles drifted down as he passed through them. Where had they come from? Shinichi wondered. Needles didn't just spontaneously generate in the middle of the desert – or at least, not in _natural_ deserts. Some caught in the threads of his shirt, and he could feel their points pricking his scalp through his hair as they fell in a cutting shower around him. It was harmless though. The needles before – they had been directed. By who? By what? Too many questions. He forced his legs to work harder.

They were slowing down, to Shinichi's relief. The build up of lactic acid had made him clumsy and lethargic. They passed the last of the needles at a brisk jog. The girl's hand never relaxed its vicious clamp on his wrist.

Spying what looked like a water hole, Shinichi asked between pants: "Are we there?"

"Not yet," the girl snapped.

They continued running.

No landmarks again. The desert stretched in an expanse of grey yellow sand, blurring into the blue of the sky in the horizon. Strangely, it wasn't hot. The white ball traversing the sky was simply that, then. A light source. It was scant relief, though. He could feel the back of his shirt sticking wet to his back. Sweat dripped from his forehead and into his eyes.

Battered and feeling as if he'd ran the marathon twice over without water, their little group finally slowed some more. Shinichi could make out the shape of a battered army truck in the near distance through bleary eyes. _We're here._ It was a realisation that struck him intuitively, the culmination of an abrupt slowing of pace, and the smallest hint of relief seeping past the tense demeanor of both his captors.

They looped around the truck several times, breathing evening with each circuit, until finally, their feet came to a halt. With a gasp Shinichi collapsed on the ground, followed shortly after by both the girl and the surprised looking man.

The three of them were like overused bellows. They were wheezing, gasping at air and never grasping quite enough to ease the pressure on their lungs. They weren't used to this, Shinichi realized. But of course, the game had not been in motion long. Two, three weeks, at most. And they would not have been running all of the time. Both of his captor's bodies were oddly shaped in areas where new muscle had been forced to grow.

After regaining most of her breath, the girl disappeared inside the truck. She returned with a metal gas tank. When she opened it, however, a tantalizing slosh and whiff of wetness revealed its contents to be the gold of the desert. Wordlessly, she dropped the tank in front of Shinichi's feet. Despite his raging thirst, Shinichi forced himself to down the water in small, measured sips.

"Come on." A growl asserted that he was not the only thirsty one, and Shinichi caught a mouthful more before passing the tank on.

The Ed Gein's expression no longer looked so surprised. His brows were furrowed into a frown of concentration. He had tipped his head back, and was carelessly guzzling the contents. After a long moment, he put down the tank and wiped his lips with the back of his hand. A pause. With a deliberate shake of his head, he turned around and vomited into the sand.

Shinichi gulped.

Ignoring him, the man calmly placed the nozzle back to his lips and continued drinking.

The girl drank in much the same way, except she was like a sponge. Vomiting seemed beneath her. Shinichi noticed her face twisting in a strange inner battle when the fluids began climbing back up her throat, but she'd managed to tip in another mouthful and viciously consigned them back into her stomach.

She put the now empty tank down at last. "Ten minutes!" the girl barked, before clambering into the truck and shutting the door behind her.

The other man simply curled himself in the sand, and to all appearances, was immediately fast asleep.

Shnichi flopped onto the ground, exhausted. _Ten minutes,_ he groaned inwardly. _We'll be running again, most likely. Damn it._ The little chase had done nothing except place him in questionable company, as well as erode his physical condition to a state where he couldn't escape if he'd wanted to. His legs felt like magnets sucked towards the attraction of the Earth's core. His arms – strangely – were similarly tired. At least the voice was honest, he thought wryly. He'd been almost killed in his first hour. By floating needles, no less.

He should try to rest when he could. He knew he should stretch – warm up the muscles, prevent them from cramping. It'd be easier on him in the inevitable continuation of their chase. He bent a leg experimentally, and bit back a yelp.

 _Screw it,_ he thought. He'd be selfish, for once, and forget the drill of logic. So he sat there, chin tucked between his legs, contemplating the pixellated sky. Beside him, Ed Gein slept, his arms coiled around his knife as if it were a teddy bear.

It was not long before the air began to hum. So slight, at first, that Shinichi thought it was merely the wind. But the wind rarely blew hard enough on the ground to make a sound like elephants marching. Alert now, he sat up straighter. A cloud of dust was approaching them. Small grey flecks were spinning around in the dust, and Shinichi experienced a brief moment of stunned panic. "Zombie needles," he muttered. Shinichi rubbed a hand over his eyes. "No, stop, Kudo. Deep breaths."

Several inhalations and exhalations later, Shinichi felt significantly more positive about his situation. But the cloud of needles was still rapidly approaching and showed no sign of careening off to hallucination land.

He thought he should at least seek cover behind the truck. Except his legs were currently out of commission. Along with a few other potentially helpful body parts.

So Shinichi sat there like a nesting duck, heart thudding. The cloud rushed steadily closer, and he could almost hear the zipping of the needles slicing restlessly in the whirlwind of sand.

"What are you?" Shinichi said quickly, before the cloud could close the final few meters between them.

The cloud paused. _Grunt._ Before he could blink, the sand and needles had dropped away and it was simply (and he used the term lightly) his third kidnapper – the troll man with the squashed head - who was now blinking at him in a decidedly confused manner, a small piece of paper crushed in his fist.

 _Grunt._ The troll man said coherently, and Shinichi ceased to exist in his small pin head brain. He had seen the truck. A truck, the man understood. He had arrived in a truck. A track meant safety, and most importantly, water. Water he could understand too. He felt brittle, but he remembered that liquid – splashing in it, drinking it afterwards (or before, it tasted better before he'd bathed) made him tender again. Sniffing the air, the man grinned lopsidedly. He could smell it – a sweet, sweet scent.

Mind set and comfortable, he lumbered up to the truck, the paper falling out of his fist and his captive all but forgotten.

Shinichi saw the scrap of paper fall out of the troll man's fist, transfixed. Arms suddenly finding a will of their own, he lunged and managed to wrap his fingers around the scrap of white. He lay on his stomach for a precious few seconds, sand prickly against his cheek. With effort, he rolled over and held his prize up to the light. It was a laminated card.

 _Ability: Range. Level: Basic. Type: Melee offensive._

Shinichi's brow furrowed. Turning it over, he gave a start of surprise.

 _P.S I love sharp objects too._

The post script was handwritten. Shinichi traced a finger thoughtfully across the calligraphy. He was not mistaken. The whorls of the 'P', the florish in the curl of the 'S'...it was the same as writing on his 'invitation'.

He flipped it over and clicked his tongue in disgust. "What, is this an RPG or something?" he muttered. "Some chess game..."

Frowning, he pressed the card closer to his face, as if he could somehow discern more of the meaning by counting the imperfections of the ink. He leaned his head back and regarded it as a distance. Nothing was revealed. The card remained a card.

And yet... He picked up a needle off the ground. Turning it over in his fingers, he felt the length of it, the smooth slippery texture of steel. "Melee offensive," he whispered. "Range." Experimentally, he tapped it against the card. He let it go. The needle fell gracelessly to the ground.

Chewing his lip, he fought back the protests of his arm muscles and picked it up again. He threw it up into the air, holding the card with his other hand and thinking about birds, airplanes and helium balloons as he did so. The needle seemed to hover a bit – but that could have been the wind – before again, tumbling harmlessly back into his hand.

Suddenly, the truck door sprang open and 'Dodo' clambered out, smacking his lips. Shinichi froze, the card still clutched in his hand. The troll-man didn't look at him twice.

"Dooo dooooo." Dodo had extended his head back into the truck. His syllables were high and song-like, a steep contrast to the unintelligible 'grunts' he'd used earlier.

The troll man's head retracted. His neck folded neatly back into his torso like a harmonica. He sat there, withdrawn, with a vague expression in his eyes. Moments later, a clank of heavy footsteps could be heard before the truck door burst open and the girl was in the doorway – feet spread, arms wide and aggressive. "Get in!" she snapped.

Ed abruptly uncurled from he foetal position on the ground and moved fluidly into the truck. It was as if he had never been asleep at all.

Shinichi glanced behind him, peering at the shifting dunes, squinting into the sky. If he went back... He looked at the truck and the scowling figurehead before him. He looked back at the desert, at the place where his yellow landing cushion had been. It was a single node on a pathway which led home. It was gone. And he was not where he was to go _home_. He had a case to solve, a mystery to unravel.

"You can write a ballad to your departed parents _after_ getting in here," the girl growled.

"They don't need one," Shinichi said, vaulting into the truck with two long easy strides. "And besides, I suck at song writing."

He settled himself at the back of the truck, making himself as comfortable as possible beside one Ed Gein, who had his knife between the two.

"Here's a line," the man sliced at the air between them with his knife. "Your side, my side. Come over and I-" He made an all too obvious gesture. "-cut you." Ed's lips parted around his teeth in a facsimile of a smile. "And wear your skin."

Shinichi licked his lips and pressed himself tighter against the door. _He seems just a bit too... eager... Chances are he'll cut me_ _ **before**_ _I trespass._

The car started with a jolt that pushed Shinichi off his side of the door and into the center of the truck. He fell on his hands and knees, breath pushed out of him. The floor shuddered with the rumble of the engine.

"NE45.6 guys, it'll smooth out in a bit," the girl called from behind the wheel.

Shinichi didn't hear her. In front of him were a pair of scuffed leather shoes. Looking up, he saw they were attached to the worn hems of baggy cloth pants, which were in turn attached to the leering face of Ed Gein. The man had his knife gripped in one veined knobbed hand, and with practiced flicks of his wrist, was making delicate little incisions in the skin of the air. His eyes gripped Shinichi's own. "The line," he said slowly. "Careful boy." The grin stretched wider.

Shinichi swallowed. One thing was obvious at least – he was in the right place.

 **TBC**


	3. Chapter 3

Hello all, this chapter got out comparatively slower - and for good reason. Firstly, it's long. Long enough to be split into two to make reading easier.

Secondly, the lovely **AliceInTheSunlight** has been showering all her beta-reading writing goodness on this story~ Words need not express her amazingness because she is the embodiment of the word.

And finally, I've been revising chapter 2 to fix the pacing issues. Due to RL that's going to take a while, but the updates to the actual chapter count will continue as scheduled.

Also, if you haven't realised at this point: this is an AU. Hope that clarifies any expectations you may/may not have had :)

All mistakes/plot holes/pacing issues are hitherto my own~

* * *

 **Death Game**

 **Chapter 3: The Cardmaster**

The man's fingers were nimble despite the fabric of his gloves. With a flourish, the cards flickered as they were rearranged. Randomly? Or with an intent as clear as the calm certainty colouring the Cardmaster's eyes.

"Your pick."

The Cardmaster, bedecked in his costume of arrogant white, presented his hand with a small twirl. The bland faced man with the diminutive frame reached a shy hand out and laid it clumsily on a card.

There was a pause.

Sympathy, perhaps, on the Cardmaster's part? To allow the man to retract his hand, and choose another – perhaps for better, perhaps for worse.

When the blank gaze of the man did not budge from where it lay in a dark pool of introspection, the Cardmaster sat back and silently flipped over the card.

The man felt a wave of dizziness wash over him. The sight of the card – crisp white scrawled with the inexact hand prints of a shadow – struck his heart like a bell, and a hollow shiver resonated with each tremoring wave of sound.

"Black Joker," he heard the Cardmaster state. Looking up, he met a pair of piercing blue eyes glowing from the shadow of a hat pulled low over the Cardmaster's face. The eyes hadn't blinked, not once, in his entire stay in the room. When he'd entered, trekked his way through a corridor carpeted on all four sides, he'd felt he'd been driven by a force external to himself, yet somehow resonating from within him. A subconscious will that had quietly accepted the promptings of his conscious, but when... He shook his head, a movement disguised by the shaking of his body.

"Tell me what it means," his voice quavered, even as the devil residing in his subconscious answered.

He'd expected many answers. The knowing gaze of the Cardmaster seemed to hold the key to a wealth of secrets he'd locked up and buried. A futile effort, he realised, under the judgement of a God. Yes, the man before him was the only God left to him. And so it had been ever since he'd entered the accursed Game. Driven by what? A taste like rot worked its way up his throat. He'd been better off before. He'd been _living_.

The Cardmaster weighed the feather light card in a gloved hand. "Let's play a game," he said at last. "Entertain me, and I may let you live."

"How?" he snapped, sharper than he'd intended. But the cascade had started. "How? You've stolen my life! You've made me worse than I was! Look at me! Look at these hands!" He stretched them out – bony, knobbly things with thin skin flaking where he'd dug his fingers in and tore. It hadn't been enough. The sting of air only reminded him of where the blood had been – seeping in through his pores, permeating his soul. Looking at them, he felt horror rise. Tendrils of red had snaked out from beneath the skin and crusted his hands in a skeletal cage of dried plasma. "No-no," he sobbed, and stretched them behind his back. Away from him, away from those unwavering blue eyes. "Don't look, don't look at me..."

The Cardmaster threaded gloved fingers through each other, and rested them on his chin. "Confess what you've done," he said plainly. "And I'll let you live. For, say, five minutes. Enough to pen a letter, write a will, anything that corpses need to do before they head to their graves. All I require is complete honesty."

The man shuddered, a full body tremor that rose from his toes. "Then... will you let me go?" he whispered, eyes restless. "And keep the agreement – what I agreed to – in order to enter this game? Because remaining here... is not living."

"You strike a hard bargain – wanting the reward despite bailing out so early?"

The man's teeth flashed. "Then you may end me now."

Gloved hands curled gently around his hands, the scarred, dirty mass a stark contrast to the solid white. "Well, that would be no fun. And I am not one to waste a toy. I have been quite bored, stuck here, waiting for the outside world to catch up to me, after all." He hummed and drummed his fingers lightly against the man's hand in a gesture that was meant to feel reassuring, but instead prodded all the wrong sores.

"Who was the last person you'd met, before you came to me?" the Cardmaster said suddenly.

"Jonny," he replied. He fell silent.

"Describe him for me. What was Jonny like? What did Jonny like? What did he hate?"

Unbidden, the image of Jonny rose in his mind. "He... was a kind man," he said softly. His memories were lit by candlelight. "He'd found a liquor stash, somewhere. I remembered being cold, numb, both inside and out. He took a drink first, then shared it with me. Not out of sympathy, I think, but something that was common to both of us. It didn't matter what it was, it was just that feeling. Of being real, when the outside world isn't. Something, at least, that didn't feel like lies. Other times he spoke a lot. He said practical things, asked the practical questions. Like where do we camp today. Who do we target. Where do we find food. Maybe too practical. Maybe that's why he ended up here." He opened his mouth, but the words tangled in his throat and lodged there in a convulsive lump.

"Jonny was a kind man."

He found himself nodding. "Yes, yes. Kind, so much kinder." He stopped and took several gasping breathes to calm the heat rising to his eyes.

"Were you kind to Jonny?"

"Yes!" he sobbed. "He told me himself! He'd been insensitised – immune! He didn't feel anything! It was clean, final, not that obscene dribbling mess you seem so bent on insisting! There was no hope left for either of us, and we realised it too late!" He moaned. "We would have made it, or at least he could have – he'd been an impeccable prisoner..."

"But you came here, while he died, believing himself devoid of hope."

At that, he shrunk into himself, reaching for a void within his heart which would claim him from the clamour of emotions warring on the battlefront of his mind. Too many faces, too many people, washing past in the stream of life as his purpose fled with them. He'd killed, oh, he'd killed plenty before. But it was the thrill of the cuckoo hiding among the curlews, snatching chicks from beneath their unsuspecting beaks. Not this wildness, this survival of the vicious. The specters would haunt him, and they already were – taking on faces of his personality and singing a terrible ballad. _And so he rowed the boat, and fell in the water alone, with no one to pull him up – pull him u-u-up, to pull him up-_

He was already far gone when the Cardmaster stood up, and considered the man for a moment with an expression almost of pity. He'd rolled the man over without trouble, and spread a large sheet of white over the couch and moved the man back, slurred words still frothing from his lips. With a sudden movement, the Cardmaster plunged the black joker into the man's stomach and _twisted_

The sheets were then duly disposed of. The body he flung out with the sheets. The room was restored – a soothing turquoise upholstery complemented by vases of flowers in a myriad of orange hues.

With brisk strides, the Cardmaster crossed the room and poked his head out of the doorway. The dark passageway beyond was empty. No one to spin the roulette today? It didn't come as a surprise. After all, the chances were too slim.

Only the fools, only the hopeless came to him. Only when they had nothing left, would they place themselves entirely in the hand of fate – the Cardmaster himself. And he dealt harsh, _harsh_ cards.

* * *

" _It is now sunrise."_

Shinichi's eyes opened. If not for the deadpan announcement of the truck radio, he would have thought no such thing. The sun was as high in the 'sky' as when he'd fallen asleep. Which, he thought, should have been at least five hours ago.

There was a calmness in the truck. Ed seemed fast asleep, hands loose on the handle of his knife, eyes closed and head tipped back on the headrest. A small bubble rose and sank from the cavern of his gaping mouth.

In the front seat, the girl had switched places with Dodo. The troll-like man was now the one gripping the steering wheel, and with minute twitches of his large forearms, kept their little vehicle on a straight track.

It was peaceable – a lull from the frantic events of the day before.

Shinichi sat up and rubbed a hand down the small of his back, feeling a dozen aches and cramps from his twisted posture. He glanced out of the dusty window. The desert had given way – unrealistically fast – to sparse outcrops of trees and boulders. It was yet another reminder that he was in a constructed environment, an artificial reality created for a purpose he still did not understand.

There had been clues though. Shinichi thought back to the needles, the responseless card hanging limply in his hand, and the strangest clue of all – his captors. He sat up gingerly, careful to keep a distance from the madman with the knife.

 _Ed Gein._

The man's case he remembered all too well. His had been an auxiliary role, at best, a position that had struck him as condescending at the time, but now filled him with a rush of relief. If Ed Gein knew, that he had provided the sealing evidence for his (unfortunately, cut short) stint in jail... Shinichi's gaze had travelled to the knife again, and he quickly yanked it away, along with the lingering thoughts of Ed's crazed eyes peering out from behind his skin.

"You."

Shinichi raised his eyes. The girl was watching him.

Tapping a finger against the headrest, the girl said plainly, "You only just entered the game right? No, don't answer me, I can tell. 'Landing cushion' my ass." She scoffed. "You better know the rules then. Do you?"

 _Kill, kill, kill and become queen._ He shook his head.

The girl nodded. "Well, apart from the basics: eat , shit, survive, we're lucky enough to have the addition of 'kill'."

Her voice seemed bitter as she said the word. Her head momentarily disappeared from view. Shinichi heard the mechanical hum of the window being rolled down, before the girl's head leaned out and she spat a wad of saliva out. The window rolled up again with the same sound. Cleansed, she continued without pause.

"I was one of the first to be brought here," she said. "It... this 'game' promised something I couldn't refuse. We don't talk about it aloud, because this thing is too fragile. I feel that... and the others too... that if we talk, we might destroy it, or at least the hope of it. And that would probably be worst of all." She shuddered, and whispered to herself, "To live without hope."

Then she shook her head, and the moment of vulnerability was gone. "This is a battle royale," she said bluntly. "We went about it individually at first, but then the smart ones figured they'd gang up on the weak, and kill them first. Then they'd split up, and kill their weakest. And so on, until the strongest, or the slyest of them, end up the victor. But they forgot one thing. Within the group, there were also divisions – factions where some couldn't get along, and slowly, we split. Some in threes, fours, some in twos, even a group of ten stayed together despite their differences. Me and Ed-" she gave a nod to the sleeping figure. "-we got along best. There aren't many girls here, and he prefers female skins, so I figure – hey, why not? We both have something to gain here. Me, his knife. And him, my skin if I die. And with the two of us, he'll get more. I'm just the cherry on top. Not that I'm planning to die, of course." She bared her teeth in a vicious smile. "Don't you get any ideas either, newbie."

Shinichi gave a soft laugh. "Rest assured: I've been told I'm a master of self-preservation." _A battle royale. I can think of a number of organisations who would do such a thing. But none of them seem to fit... especially when she mentions this 'prize'._

The girl nodded, but her posture remained tense. "There are around two new people brought in every week. Some groups just kill them as soon as they get here. Get a sniper, and put a few bullets in when they're still dizzy on their... landing cushions. Dead as a doornail. If you'd landed in the forest, or the coastal areas, you'd probably be a corpse before you fell out of the sky. But – _lucky_ for you – you landed in the inhospitable deserts of Doom and Damnation, address: the Middle of Nowhere. Also happens to be our little crew's personal domain – and we prefer the polar opposite of the fool's divide and conquer strategy: unite and bust their pea sized craniums in."

Shinichi cocked his head. "Not so pea-sized, I'd wager," he said slowly. "They seem formidable, if they have enough resources to station a permanent ambush around the landing areas while simultaneously keeping them supplied. And they've secured good locations, along with a way to keep the numbers down." He watched her face carefully as he spoke. "Your strategy, however, doesn't seem geared towards winning. You seem to be the hit-and-run group on the outskirts – and if the lessons of history are anything to go by, you're the ones who survive, but ultimately do not win the final confrontation."

The girl flashed a grin at him. "Ha! We got a smart one, Dodo." Dodo gave a grunt of acknowledgement. Beckoning at Shinichi, the girl leaned conspiratorially closer.

"There's something I haven't told you yet," she said in a stage whisper. "This place is entirely holographic."

Shinichi started, eyes widening. _Preposterous! For a hologram to last at this scale, and to replicate texture so accurately... they must have used a staggering amount of resources. Just who am I dealing with here?_ His hands tightened. A thread of excitement made his heart sing. A mystery on a grand scale. A formidable enemy who could - if they caught on to his snooping - throw all the resources of the upkeep of an area of holographic space at least the size of Egypt to stop him.

The girl was clearly enjoying herself. "So you see," she said, grinning. "There is a way to overcome impossible odds." She tucked her hand into her jacket and withdrew it closed. With a flourish, she flipped her palm over and uncurled her fingers.

Shinichi remained expressionless, but his hand crept irresistibly to brush at the pocket of his pants, where below the thin veneer of fabric, was the card Dodo had dropped.

For the girl was holding a deck of cards.

"May I?" he asked, hand hovering... carefully... it was a delicate operation, he had to play this well.

She nodded.

He looked at the cards. Each one was an unassuming laminated white, with hand penned ink curling on the surface.

 _Ability: Melee. Level: Basic. Type: Range defensive._

 _Ability: Cast. Level: Basic. Type: Range offensive._

 _Ability: Cast. Level: Moderate. Type: Melee offensive._

And on their backs...

 _The dead man brought his horse, his sword, his flag, but forgot his armour._

 _Can't eat it? Throw it at people._

 _You're holding the pointy end, friend._

"They're weapons," the girl explained. She pointed. "That one – summons a shield. No one knows how it works yet, just does. Saved my life on a few occasions. And that – throws tomatoes. Over ripe tomatoes, I might add. Once, when Ed and I were still new to this, we found ourselves stuck in the middle of a cliff. Nowhere up, nowhere down. We had to wait for a wind which would blow up about once in a moon cycle. We had no food, but we did have this handy little gem. Ed and I ate nothing but tomatoes for an entire month. Raw tomatoes for breakfast, raw tomatoes for dinner, raw tomatoes before bed. I _hate_ the bloody things now." She shuddered. "I haven't figured out how to use that one yet," she said thoughtfully, pointing at the final card in Shinichi's hand. She held up her arm. Raised, pearlescent scars ran across it in a gruesome grid. "I almost lost my arm," she said in distaste.

"These will turn the tide for us," the girl continued, pulling the sleeve back to conceal the white lashes ribboning across her skin. "They're extremely rare – most groups have none, the bigger groups might have one. And as you've seen – _we_ have _three_." She pulled a pleased grin at herself. It soon morphed into a scowl. "If not for _Dodo_ here, we would have four." She glared at the man clutching the steering wheel beside her.

Dodo hunched over his wheel and tried to turn himself into chair stuffing. He grunted in distress.

The girl sighed. "I just hope the sand's buried it deep," she said glumly. "Dodo," she admonished. "Try not to lose concentration next time."

The troll man mewled.

"We found Dodo wandering around by himself," the girl said. "He sounds stupid, but don't let him fool you. He understands more than he lets on."

Shinichi leaned back, turning over the information in his head. "I'll keep that in mind," he said slowly. "So, where are we going now? What's the plan, leader?"

A glint of metal flashed through the air. With a grunt of surprise, Shinichi fumbled with the knife before finally managing to steady his catch.

"We have information on an encampment – oh, not far from here," the girl said grimly. "Think of it as an initiation ceremony, newbie."

 _Well, crap._ Shinichi stared at the knife in his hand. The blade was sharp and eager. _Stay your thirst a bit longer,_ he thought wryly at the weapon. _I don't plan on wielding you. Unless it truly is inevitable._

There was a stare boring into his head. Shinichi looked up, and met the girl's eyes. They were pale grey, and bore a strange expression on them.

"Why do you look like that?" she said. "Haven't drawn blood before?"

Shinichi reacted before he could stop himself.

The girl's eyes narrowed. "And yet you're here...how interesting," she hissed.

Feeling another pair of eyes on his back, Shinichi whipped around. Ed had not moved, but his eyes were open. They held Shinichi's own and refused to let go.

"Pure skin, uncalloused by the leather of a knife, untainted by the iron smell of blood." The words were said like a sermon. "Pure skin that slides so easily off the flesh, slides so easily on my own." Ed was shivering.

Without warning, Ed lunged at him. With a shout, Shinichi went under. His hands locked on Ed's forearm, desperately holding him at bay in a tense stalemate. Ed's body was spasming, his lips frothing. In the front seat, the girl was yelling. Shinichi couldn't hear her – blood was drumming into his ears, his arms were sore as they held Ed off, counteracting each clench of muscle aimed to drive the knife in his hand into Shinichi's chest, his throat, any exposed body part. Gasping, Shinichi rolled, feeling the grains of dust crunch into the soft skin of his neck.

Ed lost his balance with a yell, stabbing his knife into the floor of the truck to keep his balance. Shinichi got up slowly, bent half over by the low roof of the truck.

"-the fuck Ed, are you trying to jeopardise our plan?" The girl was half out of her seat, arms waving uselessly through the narrow gap between the seats in frustration. "Goddamn it! Stop the truck Dodo!"

Ed lunged at Shinichi again, making a low noise in his throat. Shinichi ducked away, backing off. Suddenly, the floor pitched forward, and Shinichi found himself plastered against the head rest of the front seats. Ed was in a similar predicament, knife clenched uselessly in one hand, face squished into a spectral mask, his other hand groping blindly in Shinichi's direction.

With a jerk, the floor returned to equilibrium. Ed was up in a flash. His knife was in his hand, Shinichi was cornered, the doors were locked. Ed grinned. His victory, his skin to wear. And what a skin! He had not seen one such as this for too long – he thirsted after the silky feel of it draping over his body, lusted for a mirror to express his vanity in.

Shinichi blinked spots out of his eyes. Ed was coming towards him. His silhouette wavered in Shinichi's vision until all he could see was the knife. White and wickedly sharp, clutched in Ed's blurry hand.

Death drew closer. He could feel the black kiss against his ear, a covert promise whispered.

Something snapped. Ed launched forward, control lost, a single goal foremost in his mind. Shinichi watched his arm swing, detached, watched the knife in his hand slip easily, tenderly, between Ed's ribs. Watched Ed stagger, his face contort in a scream of surprised agony. Watched the knife tense in Ed's hand as he took a dying breath and lunged again. Watched, in his mind's eye, the scene of an autopsy room. His voice, bland and clinical, speaking: _He stabbed her through the ribs. Then he angled up, to get at her heart._ As if in acknowledgement, his hand twitched and the knife silenced the rhythmic beat.

Ed swayed, Shinichi's hand buried halfway in his chest. Shinichi's mind was a blank void. He saw his own body as if from a distance, attached to Ed by a grotesque growth of blood drenched arm.

Suddenly, the door on the side flew open. The girl barged in, face white and lips tight.

She had a dagger in her hand. " _You."_ She pointed the dagger at Shinichi, hand shaking. " _Let him go right now!"_

His hand obediently retracted from Ed's chest. Without the support, the man's body fell like a sack of potatoes. Ed's corpse lay sprawled out like a starfish planted on the floor, face in a grinning mask.

The girl advanced slowly, dagger pointed at Shinichi with trembling fingers. Shinichi's feet backed silently away.

Slowly, she sank to her knees beside Ed. She put her arms around his neck, uncaring of the blood. "You fool!" she exclaimed, choking.

 _I killed someone. I killed-_

Shinichi's face blanched. He pushed past the girl, past the door, and found before him an expanse of loamy earth. Clenching his hands into the soil, he let out dry, heaving gasps. _I killed someone._ Even the brown earth couldn't obscure the red tinge on his hands, staining his nails a rusty iron colour.

He didn't know how long he stayed there: mind empty, hands up to his wrists buried in the concealing earth. But when he came to, he was on the truck. A white sheet had been laid over the back of it, but the pristine colour only served to accentuate the absence of blood.

 _I can't afford to let this set us back_. He thought he heard a voice say. It spoke hesitantly, drained – tired. Young and lost. _We have to keep going. But don't think I'll forget this, newbie. I won't._

 _I killed someone._

He could still see Ed's eyes – milky white and filming over. Suddenly there was a clamouring in his brain as two decade's worth of crime scenes conspired to enter his mind at once. A sequence of dead bodies, dead eyes, limp hands, the onset of rigor mortis, limbs like wood. Ed seemed to encompass them all. He heard his own voice as if from a distance again, diagnosing the causes of death.

He remembered this case. Ed's face had mellowed; the hollows under his cheeks had filled out into that of a youthful female's. She had been murdered while on a camping trip by a jealous friend. A switchblade had been used, a part of Shinichi's mind proffered.

But all he could see was his shadow self, standing by the dead body and picking through the corpse with a clinical detachment. All he could hear was the voice of his shadow self proclaiming:

"The killer is..."

His shadow self turned to face his mind's eye. The phantom's gaze was considered. A smirk graced his lips. _Is this what they all see, before I bring them to justice?_ Shinichi wondered.

Shadow lips moved. Shinichi closed his mind's eye, but he had already seen the first syllables.

Somehow, impossibly, the darkness before his eyes melted into sleep.

 **TBC**


	4. Chapter 4

Again, beta'd by the wonderful **AliceInTheSunlight**.

Time to start tying plot threads together after this one. :)

* * *

 **Death Game**

 **Chapter 4: First Meeting**

Death was no stranger to the Game. He came on crow wings, swooping in to adorn the grounds with new graves and stone markers to mark the site of his visitation. Shinichi saw him from a distance, at first. A spectre stalking the battlefield. And soon, he saw him up close, close enough to smell the scent of rot and decay rolling off his black skin. As Death placed his sucking kiss on the cheek of his victim – sometimes through Shinichi's doing, sometimes through the doing of the others – Shinichi could hear a whispered question. _Are you still living?_

Strange, that he had not heard the voice of Death so clearly before. Death had left his residue for him to clean up for as long as he'd remembered. But he had never spoken – gone too soon for him to notice the detective shadowing his every move. But now Death knew him, his hands, his heart, as dearly as himself.

They were tentative acquaintances now. In each battle initiated by the girl – she still remained nameless, he'd never found the right time to ask – Death spoke with Shinichi.

 _Best to strike at the heart, with a clean shot. He seems to be proficient at close range._

 _I know._

So he took a card which summoned arrows made of ice and sent them piercing towards the man's unprotected chest.

Before he could hear his dying scream –

 _He's coming too close. Why don't you lop off his hands, so he can't wield that sword?_

 _I know._

The knife blade flicked out and severed the hands off the wrist in two clean cuts. It was followed by a slice to the neck, and the head slid off with a muffled crunch of bone and muscle. Best to finish them quickly, before the pain struck. Before he had time to look – _really look_ – at the organs decorating the trees like macabre Christmas lights, and his own fastidious attempts at keeping himself free of blood and evidence, which made him all the more suspect in this red painted amusement park.

And when Shinichi still stood after each encounter, Death would depart with a soft sigh, and a promise to return later. He wished to be friends, after all.

Most of the time, Shinichi turned his back and rejected Death's proffered hand and heart. But there were the occasions, where he sat on a holographic tree branch and clutched his head in his hands so he would actually have time to _think_ about who was behind the game, why the mindless murder, and if there was any end to the pixels indicating the distance of the blue sky (logically, he knew there was). At this time, though, logic escaped him, and all he wished was to speak with Death.

But these moments were also the ones where Death remained silent.

"We're getting closer," the girl said one day. Shinichi, Dodo and the girl sat in a circle around the small fire they'd lit with the driest branches they could scavenge to minimize the smoke. The circle was too close – Ed's absence was an almost palpable wall between them.

She held up the deck of cards. It had grown from three, to seven. "Three more," she said, a flushed light in her eyes. "And we'll have them all."

 _Three more,_ Shinichi thought tiredly. _And maybe I'll have some answers._

Dodo gave an excited hiccup and clapped his thick paws together.

"I have information on the next encampment," the girl said. She had a faraway look in her eyes. "It won't be easy, they've noticed our movements and they're prepared. From a distance, it looks like they've holed themselves in an underground network of caverns."

"It'll be dangerous," Shinichi acknowledged, voice flat. "If the tide comes in before we're done..."

The girl nodded. "We'll go in as early as we can. And even then, we'll only have two hours."

There was an awkward silence around the camp. Nobody asked the question hanging like a thicket of spears above them. And after they'd recovered the final three cards? What then? Would they be the only ones left, and have to turn their blades on each other? Would they be betrayed, and the mission aborted before it began?

Neither of them had the answers. Nothing to do then, except curl up and scoop a blanket of loose holographic leaves over themselves and surrender to sleep. Would Death visit him tomorrow, wondered Shinichi. He thought he heard a faint whisper on the wind.

 _Not yet... not yet..._

He was waist deep in water.

They had come in as soon as the tide allowed – meaning the cavern was still half full of brine that stuck his clothes – borrowed permanently off the last group of people they'd ambushed – to his body. Shinichi suppressed a shiver. The thin breeze blowing through the cavern stole the heat from his body and left him cold, sopping and miserable.

Gritting his teeth, he forced his legs to move. The current tugged at the hem of his pants and threatened to pull his feet out from under him. Sharp stones poked at his skin through the thin rubber soles of his shoes.

Though he knew it was all holographic, in the moment, it hardly seemed to matter. The warm mugs of coffee brewed fresh from the antique model in the police headquarters was a distant memory now. He recalled the taste not as sensation, but a memory of something pleasant. Something decidedly missing from his current lifestyle.

The girl had given him two cards for his mission. Dodo held three, and the girl held the remaining two. It would be enough – the cards themselves more than compensated for numbers. And numbers their target had in droves.

Shinichi half swam, half walked on the slippery rocks. He brushed a hand on the surface of the rock wall beside him. There was a small indent, too small for the eye, but just enough for a sensitive hand to feel. Shinichi nodded to himself. Reaching his hand out confidently, it landed on another indent.

Fighting the sucking of the tide as it withdrew from the cavern, he shuffled his way forwards with the guidance of the markings.

He came soon to an open chamber. Pulling himself out of the water with a gasp, he lay down on the cool rocks like a stranded fish, catching his breath. Finally, he stood, and looked around. Rock spires twisted in structures barely manmade – they seemed to be taken straight out of a fairytale universe. Something even Nature was loathe to replicate, made possible by the wonders of holographic technology.

Shinichi touched on of the tendrils of rock, marvelling at the texture of rock and the slight wetness on his fingertips where the water had soaked into the minute cracks inside. Light scintillated and bounced off the tiny crystals of water caught in the minute grooves, casting the place in a soft glow of blues and faint rose.

There was a large pool in the centre of the cavern, dark and fathomless. The rock spires reached up to form an arch over it. Every couple of seconds, Shinichi could hear a faint drip as the water collected by the stone merged into a single droplet that fell rhythmically into the black depths.

He was not here to admire the scenery, he reminded himself. He'd heard a scream – it came to him hollow and distorted, but he thought he heard the deep bass of a man. Taking a quick glance around him, he hurried off along the side of the lake, hands skimming the wall.

 _There._

A groove – slightly deeper than the rest, carved into a star shape gave under his touch. Rock crunched against rock, and suddenly a doorway was revealed between the embrace of two smooth boulders.

Shinichi slipped inside, quiet as a cat. Ensconced in the darkness, he listened. The scream came again – clearer this time. _Dodo,_ he realised, and felt a chill. What had made the man scream so desperately? _And he holds three cards._

He would know soon enough. Gripping the wall behind him, he navigated by touch alone through the passage, tracking the sound of Dodo's voice.

 _Where are you? Hold on._

The darkness of the passageway melted gradually into a cold blue glow. He edged out cautiously, keeping himself in the shadows.

He was on a veranda overlooking a circular room.

On the floor, hands behind his back, face broken and bleeding, was Dodo. He was whimpering now, eyes wild and straining at their sockets. Around him were their targets, clothed in black and wielding silver whips.

Shinichi felt his heart leap. His eyes counted the figures. _Thirteen. Too many._

Thirteen was the total. They were supposed to go two ways - Dodo to take down half, the girl to deal with the others, locking their enemy into a stalemate. And then Shinichi, the concealed knife, would deal the decisive blow in the thick of the battle.

But all thirteen were gathered in the one place, and the girl was nowhere to be seen.

He had no choice but to wait, Shinichi decided. The odds were against him – Dodo looked broken, he wasn't sure if he'd be able to stay on his feet, let along fight. And Shinichi only had two cards with him, while the three Dodo carried were likely to be in their enemy's possession.

A silver whip, quick as a snake and with as poisonous a bite, would flicker onto Dodo's exposed back and leave an angry red welt. For a moment, Dodo's face would contort, and he would struggle with his bonds, whuffing like a mad animal. Then the pain would tumble down from its unbearable heights and into the range of a scream of ripping agony.

Shinichi gritted his teeth, his knuckles white from where they gripped the stone wall behind him. Each lash, each blood curdling, pitched scream from Dodo taxed his control. But his mind knew with the cold clarity of logic, that he would only be dooming them both, rushing down to save him like the brash hero.

So he held himself back, and suffered along with the man for his inability to act.

Dodo's head thrashed, and his eyes rolled with each lash and following scream. Suddenly, his red eyes swivelled and caught on Shinichi's own wide blue ones. Dodo uttered a low moan, gaze pleading, imploring.

Shinichi's heart thudded, his palms grew hot and sweaty. _I'm sorry,_ he tried to send with his eyes. _I can't. Endure just a bit more._

All this time, Dodo's gaze never left him. Finally, his eyelids swelled shut from the lashes dealt to his forehead and he rocked blindly like a mannequin to the whim of his torturers.

"Enough, " a voice rasped. "there are more bugs we have not squashed. Yet. Leave him, he has learnt his lesson."

The remainder of the hooded circle quietly picked themselves up from their positions beside Dodo's unmoving body and joined the man with the raspy voice. They had barely gone two steps towards the mouth of the entrance when a flood of needles shot into the room and pierced each surprised acolyte through the fabric of their shoulders.

Amidst the howls, Shinichi could make out a shadow panting by the doorway.

It was time.

He took out his card with steady hands and whispered a word. A flood of energy washed through his arms as he was filled with an instinctual control. Thirteen pristine icicles, fashioned like oval spearheads, rose from the vapour in the air and positioned themselves at his fingertips.

With a silent command, they streaked towards the recovering acolytes. Some were pierced through vital areas – heart, liver, stomach, brain – and died immediately. Others had been prepared, their peripheral vision or instinct noticing the danger approaching. Impromptu shields were thrown up, or daggers drawn to deflect the ice.

And Shinichi entered into the equation.

Taking a deep breath, Shinichi tucked himself low and darted across the gallery, hearing the crack and whizz of holographic projectiles pinging off the stone wall above him. He kept a careful watch on the gaps between the railings, and kept his knife in one hand. It was almost an extension of his body now, and he used it with the same ease as his soccer ball, deflecting stray projectiles with deft flicks of his wrist.

Jumping down from the final few flights of stairs, he reached open area. Taking a deep breath, he felt Death's presence at his shoulder as he rushed through into the melee where the girl was currently engaged, feet planted firmly in front of Dodo's motionless body, damaging and killing with the reckless abandon of a murderer.

Shinichi joined her. His arms ached, his legs moved with a mind of its own, fuelled by adrenaline and an overpowering scent of blood that dug into his bestial instincts and drew forth an urge to _survive._ He alternated between sending ice crystals careening into the enemy and summoning the shield to frustrate the blows of their foe.

Slowly, they cut them down. He stood at last by the corpse of the final man, whose eyes contained a filmy gleam that spoke of the trance of death that reduced all knowledge of his surroundings to an omniscient mass of grey noise.

It was too easy, Shinichi realised. The hands clutching his cards were shaking. "They don't have the cards," he said softly to the girl, who was bent over Dodo's body.

Her head snapped around. "What?" she exclaimed. Her eyes widened. "Look out!"

Too late.

Shinichi couldn't move. Behind him was a shadow. Another cloaked one, he thought, a bad taste in his mouth as he felt an arm slip around his waist and gently pluck the two cards from his frozen hands.

The girl's eyes were shaking, but her body seemed similarly frozen.

"So much trouble," the man behind Shinichi murmured. He gave a short laugh. "But all worth it. Now I have all ten. And you? You have _nothing._ "

The fourteenth cloaked one gave a hollow laugh. "Do you think I was not aware of your plans?" he said, chuckling. "You weren't exactly – how do you say – discreet. It was obvious you were after the cards, if the trail of corpses you left behind were any indication. And as I have them, that which you seem to seek with so much fervour – it would be natural to assume that you would come to me. And what luck! You did, and solved the other half of my problem as well." He gestured to the carnage around him. "I was _wondering_ how I was going to dispose of these people. But you, vicious, _heartless_ little murderers, have done my job for me."

As he spoke, he'd plucked the cards from the girl's hand, and another three from his robe.

Grinning, he brandished the complete set of ten under Shinichi's nose. He could smell it – the plastic of the laminate tinged with the metallic scent of blood. But his body would not move.

"So close," the man said, bringing the cards even closer. "So far away."

He laughed.

And was abruptly cut off when a pink pellet suddenly appeared in midair and exploded in his face.

 **TBC**


	5. Chapter 5

And here is the (slightly) belated next chapter.

Short hiatus notice: next week may/may not have an update due to final exams. Fingers crossed!

Thank you to the wonderful **AliceInTheSunlight** for the beta (and plot bunny breeding/culling) 3

 _.wow doc manager... your disregard for my formatting is commendable  
_

* * *

 **Death Game**

 **Chapter 5: Laundry**

When the smoke cleared, the man's hands were empty.

A low titter permeated the air.

"Oh dear. What will you do now? Such a difficult situation, cardless as you are."

 _Who is that?_ Shinichi felt his eyes straining as he sought to look behind him, to the source of the voice. Realising his tendons wouldn't strain far enough, he gave up.

The cloaked man had released him, and was standing a few meters away. His gaze was fixed at a space above Shinichi's head.

So the new arrival was either tall, or in a high place. There was a convenient balcony up at around the right angle of elevation.

 _Ah._ There was a clear puddle between Shinichi and the cloaked man, who was frozen statue like in disbelief. The puddle had been formed from the ice shards melting. Perhaps dripped off some unlucky acolyte's cloak? Now it pooled in a natural mirror in the shallow pan-like groove on the ground.

He could make out a pale image on the still surface. It was faint – the cavern had few natural openings for light to shine through to give any real contrast between dark and light. He could make out a silhouette. A black mass with angular edges standing in front of a small aperture. Light caught on the shadow's arms as it moved, merging with the darkness around it as it made a gesture. Passing a hand before their face?

From the angles of their body, and the way they stood with their heels snapped close together, but pelvis thrust slightly forward, meant it was most likely a male. An arrogant one, no less.

"You- You wretch!" The hooded man shrieked, and he was moving. The long cloak tangled around his legs as he struggled up the stairs, tripping over the folds of fabric in his hurry to reach the gallery.

Shinichi made out the faint grey shadow lumbering a long ridged column. On top, the man was waiting, arms open and carefree.

A chuckle floated from the gallery. "If I am a wretch, what are you? You look barely fit to move." His hooded captor had reached the balcony. Shinichi watched him lunge forward towards the new arrival, who had his arms extended, ten cards proffered – a sardonic offering – in one hand.

"Get ready to move," Shinichi mouthed in a whisper, forcing his lips to move apart and feeling as if they were made of uranium. He wasn't sure the girl heard him. He fancied he perceived a nod carrying through the mild disturbance of the air.

The shadow of the hooded man lunged forward, and the new one swayed back, letting the momentum carry the man's body past him. Shinichi heard a gentle thump of impact before his legs were freed. In a heartbeat, he was off and running.

The girl had taken off a second later than she usually would have. Surprise? Fear? A combination was likely.

But the distance between them was negligible, and became even more so, as Shinichi stopped, driven by curiosity or some inane detective instinct to document the world around him. He glanced up, taking in the features of his suspect and almost lost his thoughts.

Atop the gallery, one hand catching an unconscious body, was a man dressed in unthinkably impractical clothing. He had donned a white suit and a white top hat with a pale blue sash circling its base. His pants were spotless white, the hem free of marks and mud. Even the shoes – looking as if they'd been just scrubbed and shined – strode the dusty stone floor as if it'd disgraced them.

Several conclusions, scenarios, possibilities met and collided in Shinichi's mind at that precise moment. The final combination was so convoluted and full of holes that he felt like tearing it to pieces with the improbability. But experience stayed his hand. _When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains,_ _however improbable_ , _must be the truth."_ So he stashed the thought away.

He needed more information. And this outside agent (because it was improbable to the point of impossibility that the man was a participant) would provide them.

The girl had reached the stairs. The loud clack of her shoes on hard stone instead of soft dirt startled Shinichi out of his thoughts. He tore his eyes away from the visage of dazziling white and chased after her. His breath came fast in his ears, heart bumping against his ribcage. At the moment before he'd torn his gaze away, he thought he'd seen a flash of blue under the brim of the white hat. A meeting of eyes, a wordless connection flaring between detective and target.

He'd felt it before. A flare of excitement that sent a spark of adrenaline racing through his veins. It stirred his muscles into action, pushing beyond their lethargy.

He'd reached the top of the staircase, the girl before him. Just as his feet touched the threshold, the figure in white turned with a flick of his cape and dashed away.

"Get back here!" the girl shouted. Her eyes were fixed on the cards held lightly in the figure's hand.

The figure laughed and dodged deftly past her grasping fingers, racing across the balcony and leaping off into mid air. The two watched, open mouthed, as the figure visibly loosened his body, joints flapping like a puppet as he launched towards the ground. The cape inflated with a _whoomph_ as he collided with the dirt floor, forming a large concealing bubble around his body.

Shinichi stood frozen by the railing for a microsecond, before turning to dash off the way they came.

"Hey!" the girl's surprised shout resonated from behind him, but it was ignored.

He had to be quick, if the flapping of the coat was any indication. Two bulges were tenting the white fabric, and even as Shinichi watched, grew bigger. Quickly, quickly... he gritted his teeth and pushed his legs harder, descending the steps in threes. Any more and he would trip, impeding what little gain he had.

The bulges swivelled, twisting the cloak in a tight spiral. He wasn't going to make it. Squinting, he tried to deduce from the shifting fabric how the mechanism worked; which screws employed what function, which one the figure was activating as he lay – motionless and to all appearances dead – on the floor.

"There!" he vocalised with a gasp. His body was already in motion. He changed his momentum, running a bit to the side as he lowered his centre of gravity. With a rush of air, his shoe collided with a small, dense rock and sent it careening into the writhing white form on the floor.

The rock collided with the apex of one of the bumps and stuck. At the same time, the other bump suddenly extended, stretching out into the shape of a metal edged wing.

A grin tugged at his face as he closed in. The figure was making muffled curses, struggling to his feet, but impeded by the dragging weight of the single wing of his half deployed glider. As the figure turned, blue met incensed blue.

 _You don't fail often, hm?_ _Shinichi thought with a small smile._ He lunged forward, taking a ball of tensile white fabric in the palm of his hands. "Got you-" he growled, and couldn't conceal the smug lilt of his voice.

"No." The replying voice was soft, rich, and displeased. "You got my cloak."

The cloak fell away in Shinichi's hand. A catch, Shinichi thought. He must've had a grip on the cloak. And I _pulled the thing out_ damn it.

He caught the slip of a wide grin splitting a pale face before it was gone with a whisk of white fabric.

The rock skittered out of the cloak, dislodged. And suddenly the great metallic second wing unfolded from the man's back, a full two body spans in wing length.

Shinichi cursed, and made a second grab. He knew it was futile before his fingers missed – skimming the edge of a suit, brushing the coarse fabric of a glove before it pushed his hand away. The combined momentum – of the hand, and the glider pushing its nose eagerly towards the ceiling – was enough to topple him over.

Man and glider became one giant metallic bird, a hybrid of man and machine, lunatic and genius as the man at the heart threw up his hands and gave a full bodied laugh. "I'm afraid I will have to postpone this chase, amusing as it has been. _Au Revoir_ , my friends!"

Almost as an afterthought, he put his hand of cards behind his back, and wagged them. From behind him Shinichi heard an ear splitting howl of rage. The man's eyebrows rose at that, and despite himself, Shinichi felt the corners of his lips quirking upwards. The action surprised him. Had there been anything particularly amusing about this place?

"But first things first-" the man declared. He glanced at Shinichi.

"Oh no, no you're not," Shinichi replied.

The man smiled again, teeth flashing. "We will see. After all, I am, commonly, also known as a _thief._ " He hopped back in an awkward gait across the air, almost steeling himself against the currents before launching himself out of the odd pattern into a spear straight shot forwards.

Except Shinichi was not there.

The man pulled up out of his dive, stumbling back a few strides from the extra weight on his back, wide eyed. He recovered himself soon, eyes narrowing and lips pulling into a thin smile.

"Is this how you play?" he said. "Ah, but we _do_ love hide and seek – _do we?"_

Shinichi cursed and leapt out of the way as the man swivelled, the metal wings on his back driving through the air and narrowing missing his right arm. Shinichi clutched it close to his chest, a safe few meters away. _So, it's either a limb or the cards. Holmes take me if I'm as far gone as to sacrifice my body for a deck of plastic laminate._

The girl seemed to have no such qualms. Even as Shinichi leapt back, she'd launched herself bodily at the cards hanging in the teasing light grip of the man's white gloves. The man repeated the manoeuvre; a sharper motion like a warning. The girl tried to twist in midair, but Shinichi could track the movement of the metal blade of the wing as it arched in the air and bit into flesh, tendon, bone and skin. With a spray of red, the girl fell, her arm buried against her chest. She hunched over into a small, quivering ball on the ground.

The man stood above her, expression unchanged from the maniac grin he wore earlier. Red spattered pristine white. "Troublesome," the man tutted. He turned to Shinichi, head cocked. "But you have my cloak, which, I suppose, will be worth the trouble."

Shinichi backed slowly away. A half step counterpoint to each full step the man took. The advancing steps became faster, driven by impatience. There came a point where Shinichi had to turn fully around and flee in order to match the rapid gait of the man's polished shoes.

He ducked even before he felt the rush of air as the man built enough speed to make use of the aerodynamics of his glider to gain the final distance between them. He plastered himself flat on the floor, cloak buried beneath him, breath lodged in his throat.

A rush of air passed above his hair, pushing his cowlick forward. As it passed, he felt the brush of a gloved hand through his hair. It was a forceful touch made intimate by his evasion. He caught the edge of a curse as the glider skidded in a wide turn around the cavern as the handler struggled to control it in the confining walls. Finally, its path straightened out of a sequence of jagged tracks.

It paused in the air.

Shinichi grinned. "Up for another round?" he called out, injecting as much mocking tease into his voice as he could manage.

In response, the glider froze for a moment near the ceiling. Shinichi could almost feel the insults and condescending barbs thrown like daggers from the blue eyes. But they were far away, and visible only as impression beneath the shadow of the man's brow now. Shinichi sniggered. "Come down, and _maybe_ you'll grow a brain to match those wings of yours!" he shouted again. In a flash, the glider vanished, shooting through the lip of the opening between the wall and ceiling.

 _That ... should keep him away for a while._ Shinichi deflated and stood up, legs trembling. The white cloak trailed behind him and made lines in the dirt as he walked slowly forward.

The girl had sat up, and watched Shinichi approach, white faced. "Who is he?" she said, voice shaking. "Where are the cards? The cards?"

Shinichi squatted down beside her, the cloak in his lap. He shook his head. "Dodo," he said. He glanced back at the burly man's unconscious form lying sprawled like a molehill on the floor three long strides away. "We need to take care of him first, and you-"

He hissed. A long gash cut across wrist and the back of the girl's hand. The pearly edges of bone peeked out from a peeling flap of flesh. "First aid kit," he managed, and searched the empty cavern with his eyes. "No, we didn't bring any, they're all outside. But that's too far. We could have used the cards, except they're gone. Clothes-"

With a grunt, he tore off the edge of his shirt and wrapped it in a quick bandage around the exposed ends of the girl's injury. "Leave it," she snapped, and took the half done bandage and began wrapping it slowly with her good hand, teeth gritted.

Shinichi drummed his fingers, idle and wanting to help, before remembering Dodo through a fog of exhaustion. He pulled the man's body over, dragging him by the feet, past the point of caring about the minute rocks that bumped across the thin skin of Dodo's scalp.

The girl was wrapping her injury with agonizing slowness.

"Who is he?" Shinichi posed the question to the air. The girl gave a minute shake of her head.

"Why'd he come here? Why now, when we outnumber him four to one? There were so many more opportune times. Was he tailing our target? That makes sense – since they'd been a large group before we came and... " He spoke a silent prayer. "...lay them to rest."

Shinichi fell silent. _Who am I, to speak about them so dispassionately? Ah, I remember. A detective, uncovering the ugly truth behind human nature. Except this time ... is it me? Has it always been me?_ He hesitated, remembering rows over rows of bodies falling across his path. Had he gone out of the way to expose himself to death? Or was it really something condoned by the fates – to shape a master detective from birth by throwing all manners of edge cases and extremists across his path from childhood.

His thumb skimmed across white fabric.

But he'd never _chosen_ it. Of that he was sure. At least, it had not been a conscious decision. Heck, he'd had psychological counselling when he was ten, and all tests returned results within the standard deviation (except, perhaps, pattern recognition and 'intelligence' whatever that meant). His parents had not been surprised that a child exposed on a weekly basis to an average of one murder case per day would turn out completely, unremarkably normal. But then again, they were his parents.

He passed another length of fabric through his fingers, marvelling at the tight weave but light construction.

Thinking about his parents brought a bitter taste to his tongue, as well as the memories of the Kudo mansion and its luxuries. Satellite reception, a library with layered bookshelves stuffed with tomes. A desk set aside in the centre with several books, some laid open with a slip of paper in between the crisp pages. Others were well thumbed and pushed carefully to the edge. Important volumes, for Shinichi, to be opened at a moment's notice. _Physical Penetration Testing 3_ _rd_ _Edition. A Question of Evidence: The Casebook of Great Forensic Controversies, from Napoleon to O.J._ And a small volume he remembered fondly: _James Patterson Collection, in Fine Print._

He paused, breath hitching. He'd been turning over the cloak idly in his hands, searching for a clue in the featureless white. And there it was. In tiny print, on a small tag attached to the hem beside the shoulder, he read:

"Gentle hand wash or dry clean only. Please return BLEACHED and DISINFECTED to the Cardmaster, 5th floor, White Tower."

"Who?" the girl muttered in sardonic distaste, nonplussed. But then her expression cracked. "The cards. _All our work. Gone!_ "

Shinichi tore his gaze away from the taunting words and wrapped a shaky hand across her back. "We'll find him," he promised. "It won't have been for nothing." _Nothing ever is._

And he would find his answers, and find his way back to the outside world.

A place which felt more remote with each passing day.

 **TBC**


End file.
